EDITH STEIN
“Whoever seeks the truth is seeking
God, whether consciously or unconsciously.” These words of St Teresa Benedicta
of the Cross best describe her: a true seeker of the TRUTH.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
was born in a Jewish family on 12th October 1891,which happened to
be the feast of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) that year and was named Edith
Stein. From her early years, Edith showed a superior intellectual acumen and
pursued a career in Philosophy, eventually earning a doctoral degree in
Phenomenology. Her intellectual
pursuits, however, were not concentrated on acquiring prestigious academic
positions but on a genuine search for ultimate truth.
Around the age of 13 she not only gave
upthe practice of her Jewish faith but also renounced her belief in the
existence of God. Years later she would attest, “What did not lie in my plans, lay
in God’s plans.” Living through a series of contradictory and mystifying
experiences as well as the dark era of the First and Second World Wars, Edith
kept on her pursuit for truth and ultimately found it on reading the
Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. She realized that truth is found in a
great love and friendship with God. She would say, “Do not accept anything as
the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love, which lacks
truth.”
On the 1st of January
1922, which was then celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus
signifying the entrance into the Jewish Covenantal relationship with God, she
was baptised and entered into the New Covenant with the Triune God. She
eventually became a Discalced Carmelite Nun taking the name Teresa Benedicta of
the Cross after the Mystical giants St Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
Her life was spent, thereafter, in
deeply living out the “Science of the Cross”. She believed that there are no
coincidences, only the hand of God at work in the world. Her birth on the feast
of the Atonement was,thus, no coincidence. She was chosen, like her spouse, as
atonement for her Jewish people. Their destiny became her
own. Having been an active Women’s rights advocate, while in the world, she was
belligerently sought after by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz
concentration camp. She died in the gas chamber, on 9th August 1942,
along with her sister Rosa (who also embraced Catholicism and became a
Carmelite Nun).
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